Work for week 1

Read the post Welcome to College Writingand the syllabus. If you have any questions about the syllabus, please leave a comment on the syllabus page so that everyone can see my answer–if you have a question, probably others do too! Also read the short pages Paper vs. screen and Setting up your blog. These pages are all listed under the Intro tab above, but it may take you a little while to feel comfortable navigating around. I will always give hyperlinks to info I’d like you to read, so you shouldn’t ever have to be searching around the blog; please let me know right away if you can’t find something or if a link is broken.

Set up your own blog, follow the procedure to “Join a class” described in the instructions, and send me an email with your class, your name, and the name you’d like me to use for your blog link.

As a first post on your blog and an introduction, write a chunky paragraph or several (about 250 words, or more, if you want) that tells us something about who you are as a writer and/or a reader. You might want to think over questions such as the following: what were some memorable pieces of writing (or reading) you did as you were growing up? what writing do you do these days (think about writing to connect to friends and family, work-related writing, writing for self-expression and/or to relieve stress)? how do you write? where? do you have favorite utensils? favorite kinds of paper? who were some influential writing teachers you had and why? what were the stages in your development as a writer and reader? what do you see as your strengths and weaknesses as a writer or reader now? what would you like to work on during this semester with respect to your writing? You may also want to include where you stand on the paper vs. screen issue. Of course, you do not need to answer all of these questions! Any questions of that sort (or other similar ones you might think of) are fair game for this “assignment.”

Feel free to approach this as “creatively” as you’d like. Some of my students in the past have responded to this prompt with a poem. If you’d like to include something visual, a photograph or several, to illustrate your words, go right ahead!

NOTE:For a quick recap of the week’s assignments, see the Assignments page, accessed by clicking the hyperlink here or clicking the link on the right sidebar, just below section info. This will be the link you’ll need to access to find work for each week. For the first few weeks, I’ll also email the link as a reminder.